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The week at Retraction Watch featured:
- Exclusive: Former Tufts researcher suspended from animal work after abuse
- A professor found her name on an article she didn’t write. Then it got worse
- Earthquake destroyed data, claims Japanese prof found to have faked results
- Debate over whether video games ‘rot kids’ brains’ won’t be settled by this retraction
- Guest post: What happened when we tried to get a book with misinformation about our field retracted
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are more than 39,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?
Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):
- “Questions arise around two published studies from Harvard group.”
- “Imaging journal editors resign over ‘extreme’ open-access fees.”
- A Cornhusker concussion study appeared to ID head injuries. Then it hit a brick wall.
- “How Related are Journal Impact and Research Impact?”
- “Flawed, futile, and fabricated—features that limit confidence in clinical research in pain and anaesthesia: a narrative review.”
- Why did a US judge remove his name from a law review article?
- Recent revelations about a federal U.S. judge disclose “serious academic and professional misconduct by almost everyone involved.”
- “How not to deal with plagiarism.” A philosopher offers a critique of how CNRS handled allegations. Our earlier coverage.
- “AI could rescue scientific papers from the curse of jargon.”
- “Journal blacklists are a useful way to promote academic integrity.”
- A George Washington University prof sues American University for plagiarism.
- “Drug approval under the microscope” in Canada over flawed data allegations.
- “A questionable study linked epidurals to autism. Then what?”
- Among pan-European scientific societies, only a quarter provide guidance on research integrity.
- “[N]ext time you do a literature search, switch ‘sort by relevance’ off.”
- A look at retractions in the nursing literature.
- “Retracted papers were identified through the Retraction Watch website (http://retractiondatabase.org) and omitted.”
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Academics and academia are incredibly important. Their actions often shape society years, decades or even centuries on. Disciplining a system reliant on authority consequent to peer review is vital. ‘Who guards the guardians?’ is the million $ question.
It’s good to see Retraction Watch doing something towards this end. But the problem is not going to go away without a serious fight, and it is a challenge society cannot afford to ignore or lose.
Authors’ affiliation and authority are essential in publishing papers. The reliability of paper data can be proven from the authors’ track records, affiliations, and authority. It is difficult to understand what is wrong with this academic system.
“The reliability of paper data can be proven from the authors’ track records, affiliations, and authority.”
“Appeal to authority” is one of the most common logical fallacies researchers consistently commit. The reliability of data can only be determined if the data is disclosed, and the means of obtaining is disclosed in detail. I see so much garbabe that shouldn’t pass peer review published by “highly regarded” authors at “prestigious institutions” that an author’s affiliation and authority mean nothing to me. I don’t intend this as a personal attack. It’s simply a question logical valididty.